The present invention relates to communication networks and, more specifically, to providing network services.
The use of tablet computers and smart phones (hereinafter collectively referred to as “mobile devices”) has grown significantly over the last decade and now is commonplace throughout the industrialized world. On mobile devices, users typically spend more time using mobile applications to access web based content than they spend using web browsers, and the disparity between mobile application usage and web browser usage continues to grow. This is because a well-designed mobile application typically delivers a superior user experience than a web browser. There are several reasons for this. First, mobile applications are much like desktop software in that they can store resources locally, whereas a web browser must retrieve all data for a website from a web server. In a mobile application, interface controls operate without the same lag time of websites, which require the transfer data back and forth between the web server and the web browser. Lastly, mobile applications also can tie into the functionality of the mobile device, which is not possible with a website being accessed via a web browser.